Credit: The Associated Press

FILE - The Jan 27, 2012 file photo shows Holocaust survivor Marcel Reich-Ranicki speakinh during a Holocaust hour of remembrance at the German Federal Parliament, Bundestag, in Berlin. Reich-Ranicki, who grew up in Poland and Nazi Germany, survived the Warsaw Ghetto and became post-war Germany's best-known literary critic, has died. He was 93.

BERLIN — Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who grew up in Poland and Nazi Germany, survived the Warsaw Ghetto and went on to become post-war Germany's best-known literary critic, has died at age 93.

The sharp-tongued Reich-Ranicki established himself as West Germany's premier arbiter of literary taste after arriving with no money in 1958 from communist Poland, where he had served as a diplomat and intelligence agent in the late 1940s.